


Ultimate Punk Rock Husband

by Lucifuge5



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:05:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucifuge5/pseuds/Lucifuge5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"...here he was wearing a wedding ring and feeling unnervingly normal about the whole thing."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ultimate Punk Rock Husband

**Author's Note:**

> I was pissed about the passing of Proposition 8. Ended up writing this fic as a way to cheer myself up. This is as fluffy as I'm going to get other than the random crack!fic or two on the back burner. Unbetaed. Yes, I've lit a candle to the grammar gods.

The night was halfway through. Pale smoke curled upwards in the mild breeze. The metrical roar of the waves crashing underneath him provided the only sound. Well, other than the tired but loud sighs coming from inside the bedroom.

He inhaled slowly, taking hedonistic pleasure in the heat inside his lungs as the nicotine traveled his body. One of their remaining 'bad habits.' Thankfully, Joe smirked, Billy had the occasional longing for hash. He turned his head sideways as he exhaled and gave a quick glance towards the sleeping and naked body in the bed before looking back at the black sea before him.

All the fights, the furious kisses and hurried sucking and languid bites and angry tears, all those moments heavy with emotions neither could articulate. The wire-thin naked tension that stretched their _thing,_ this relationship, way beyond what anyone (included themselves) could ever imagine. At the end of, what, 31 fucking years here he was wearing a wedding ring and feeling unnervingly normal about the whole thing.

Billy had sobered up after his first tour as an official member of Jenifur. Apparently, those little cunts wanted all of the punk rock street cred Billy's association with Hard Core Logo brought to their alterna-pop music without any of the inevitable and grimier consequences. The audience fucking loved it whenever Billy would spit at them, but even Jenifur's mousy lead singer thought it was bad form to see him completely blotto at the after parties. Joe rolled his eyes as he crushed the cigarette against the glass ashtray.

Having a sober Billy changed their dynamics into something that was mellow but not less true. It had actually been a condition, no, a request from Billy for Joe to stop his not-so-casual interest in blow if their coupling was to continue. "Music or coke," Billy proposed in that no name bar while holding the guitar Bucky had given him.  The truth was that the choosing part had been incredibly easy even back then during that beautiful mess of a tour. They had fallen for each other bit by bit sometime after meeting in juvie, back before they even knew punk music existed but most probably after they dreamed of being in a band.

Staying as clean as he possibly could proved to be tricky, especially now that they were residing a larger part of the year in Hell-A as Billy fulfilled the remainder of his contract with Jenifur. Joe had had to come up with a way to keep himself from waking up all runny noses and achy bones, from snorting blow during that first month when Billy went overseas to do promo with the losers. His own travel visa had not been sorted out in time to depart with him.

Joe had kept to himself for most of the short but not brief time he was inside as a result of the fraud charges from the profits of the faux benefit. He managed to fill up three notebooks with bullshit and angry and raw songs as the days, weeks and (sigh) months rolled by. Sure, there had been some close brushes with a couple of maniacs and Alpha-wannabes, but Joe's innate feral sense of self-preservation had kept him safe from any real harm. The other inmates kept their distance, wary of Joe's all too real psycho-fucker persona.

He would never admit it for as long as he lived, but Joe learned how to fight really dirty from his escalating brawls with as well as alongside Billy. For, despite the fact that Joe had always been at the very least ten pounds heavier, Billy was able to (on occasion) crack a nose and even a couple of ribs if cornered.

One day there was a letter from the US addressed to him. It had been opened (as per jail regulation), but that didn't lessen the rapid hammering inside his chest. Billy's first letter had been tentative. He had written about songs and the trivialities of his life. Joe had read that initial missive so many times he had it memorized. Every night he held the note close to his body as he slept because, in each word, he could feel every 'I miss you' and 'Do you miss me?' hidden behind Billy's musings about how big of a production ordering a simple coffee in California could be.

To his credit, Billy followed his advice not to visit him while incarcerated.

Billy met  him outside the main entrance on the day Joe stepped back into freedom. They had to stop the car on the way to Billy's hotel just so they could get that initial hasty fuck out of their systems.

Five days later, Billy went back to L.A. and Joe roamed around Vancouver doing some session work here and there as they began to plan...

Now he lived in the Southern California coast, in a two-bedroom condo with a posh facade that concealed its modest interiors.

He had an internet music show that provided him (after taxes) with enough dough to cover cheap meals for two at not-so-fancy places, a few high-quality guitars and enough Japanese and German imported cds of his favourite bands to keep things musically interesting in his life.

He had Pogo, the three-legged mutt with that fuck off expression whenever Joe stopped throwing the smelly tennis ball for it to fetch. The dog had followed him back to his beat up truck the one time Joe had actually made it to the ocean early enough to see bona fide surf punks glide on the water in the faint light of the dawn.

Both he and Billy kept crawling ever so close to the big 5-0. He didn't feel his age, for despite the lines around his eyes and the silver hairs claiming their place in Billy's head and beard, neither of the two acted any less idiotic. There was that one time they met up with John, _sorry,_ The Ox during one of the latter's tour stops in Nevada. He had sung along a couple of acoustic vintage HCL songs during John's encore. Afterwards, the peyote he had provided them with had made them howl at the moon and fuck each other until even their fingernails were sore. They had woken up wearing each other's clothes. Joe had lost a boot.

After all these years, Billy still had that smart mouth and Joe would still push him into a corner for some paranoid reason he was barely aware of. Nowadays their arguments had a peculiar start-stop quality to them. Joe wanted to re-master the entire HCL catalog; Billy felt it might be better to wait until his time with Jenifur was over as a way to avoid any legal snafus. He had grown cautious after he lost the custody battle. Joe had yet to tell him that little (or well, not so little since she was going to be 18 in a month) Billy had e-mailed him asking about her father two days before.

The marriage thing hadn't made their pairing any more solid, but it did shift them into another level of responsability that had more to do with each other than the world at large.

To their credit, everyone involved with Jenifur (down to that jealous slime Ed Festus) was cool about their marriage. Not that any single one of them cuntfaces actually showed up in Vancouver for the small ceremony, but they did send them two plane tickets to a Polynesian beach. Pipefitter, that crazy bitch, had actually cried. John played the guitar for a little while before they exchanged their vows. Bucky Haight had sent them a top hat accompanied by a strange note to the Jenifur P.O.Box mailing address. There were a few short articles in some of the Canadian press. So far, no American magazine (music or queer) had even bothered to discuss Billy's marital status. Not so surprising since Billy could manipulate any conversation with all the subtlety of plush velvet. Guess he had picked up a thing or two from Joe after all these years.

He tried to stifle a yawn as he walked towards the glass door and stepped into their bedroom. Sliding under the covers, even in the penumbra of the room, he knew Billy was going to give him hell tomorrow after catching sight of those angry purple hickeys all over his neck. He thought about their earlier romp. "Serves him well for coming home all sweaty and _musky_," Joe mused as he curled around the slim body, kissed the shorn but still wild hair and drifted into quiet sleep.


End file.
